"The Pope and the Vatican don't seem to have a problem with Obama. The Pope sent a congratulatory message to Obama. L''Osservatore Romano didn't slam Obama as the anti-Christ in its 100-days assessment. No one in Rome has told Notre Dame they did something wrong in inviting Obama to speak and honoring him. Boy, these bishops are embarrassing themselves!"
E.J. Dionne, yesterday, for example.
I can't help but wonder, though.
What if L'Osservatore Romano had run an editorial slamming Obama? What if word had come from, I don't know, the Curial office dealing with Catholic education that Notre Dame had made a mistake in honoring Obama?
Would Dionne and those who agree with him then declare the Notre Dame invitation and honor to be a mistake because..."the Vatican" said it was?I'm going to guess no. I'd guess the talking points would be a bit different if the wind were to blow in that direction. It would be all about Curial blindness to the American landscape, to the subtleties of the Church-state relationship in the United States...and so on.
Selective proof-texting using Rome-generated documents is nothing new, and everyone's guilty. Guilty of highlighting statements that support our views, and ignoring those that undermine them. Guilty of treating all texts - whether they be papal encyclicals or editorials in the Vatican newspaper - as having equal weight, depending on how we would like to use them today.
Back to the paper - Austin Ruse provides a useful critique of the editorial, explaining how the writer gets some important facts wrong about the Obama-administration embryonic research proposal. This is key. If the editorial is based on faulty understandings and premises, the value of it is diminished. It doesn't matter where it was published and it doesn't matter if the Pope himself had written it.
Others have claimed that the editorial had also cited as a sign of hope Obama's support for the "Pregnant Women Support Act" crafted by Democrats for Life and supported by the USCCB.
As Jack Smith points out, this is wrong. Obama has not come out in support for this act, and in fact, very few legislators of either party have, sadly.
The broader issue, though, relates to the authority and ultimate importance of these various statements or non-statements.Except, the Pope's newspaper did not commend him for "seeking to limit the number of abortions" or for "supporting the 'Pregnant Women Support Act'". What the L'Osservatore article did say is:A certain surprise has otherwise come about in these days through a bill designed by the Democratic party: the Pregnant Women Support Act would move to limit the number of abortions in the United States through initiatives of aid for distressed women.
It says nothing of the president's support for the bill, because the president has not indicated support for the bill. He has not endorsed it in its current incarnation and neither did he support it as a Senator when it had been introduced in previous sessions. The L'Osservatore article also nowhere lauds the president for seeking to reduce abortions. Indeed, it would be wonderful if the president did endorse the Pregnant Women Support Act, as it would certainly bolster the bill's currently thin support.
As John Allen tirelessly points out, "the Vatican" is a meaningless term. "The Vatican" is a collection of various offices and commissions and committees, with varying degrees of authority. We've seen over and over again the media picking up idle statements from some curial office about, say, driving safety, and turning that into a declaration that "the Vatican" has proclaimed a new set of sins. Or something.
But even beyond those kinds of misunderstandings, the issue is real, and often discussed. Church institutions from the local to the international level come out with all sorts of statements all the time. How much authority do they have? Is there a middle ground between ignoring everything below the level of a papal encyclical and raising everything to the level of a papal encyclical - or the Creed?
Obviously, there is, even though it's usually not obvious what that middle ground looks like. At the very least, though, we can all be aware of our tendency to pick, choose, parse and proof-text, to trumpet statements that supports our agenda, and ignore those that challenges it - even when both kinds of statements appear in the very same document! (Which they often do, when we're talking Catholic talk)
Finally. Before we get all excited about what "the Vatican" says about Obama - or doesn't say - we might want to look at various other situations in which "the Vatican" enters into politics and civic life, and the dangers. Take, for example, the recent UN Conference on Racism:
It's an interesting and knotty problem. How does the Church engage the world realistically, providing a moral voice in contexts in which - like any human, earthly situation - the ultimate truth and shape of the events is not fully known, because nothing can be fully known, in which power and ideology trump all, in which a moral voice will be used and misused by all parties to their own advantage, in which the agent articulating the moral voice - yes, the churchmen - have their own agendas, not always consistent with the Gospel, but in which the moral voice still needs to be heard?The Holy See faced criticism this week for attending a United Nations racism conference largely seen as an attack on Israel.
The second World Conference Against Racism took place in Geneva eight years after an anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, degenerated into a series of angry denunciations of Israel.
Eight countries boycotted the event, including the United States, Germany and Israel, and almost every other European country walked out on the first day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a speech calling Israel "a totally racist government". But the Vatican delegation, led by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, decided to stay.
Later on Monday Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi, told Vatican Radio that "statements like those of the Iranian president do not go in the right direction, because even if he did not deny the Holocaust or the right of Israel to exist, he expressed extremist and unacceptable positions".
The following day Fr Lombardi said in a statement: "The Holy See deplores the use of this United Nations forum for the adoption of political positions of an extremist and offensive nature against any state. This does not contribute to dialogue and it provokes an unacceptable atmosphere of conflict."
However, the Vatican's attendance threatened to strain Jewish-Catholic relations a month before the Pope was due to visit Israel.
Rome's chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, said: "By participating, the Vatican has given its endorsement to what is being prepared there [against Israel]."
Shimon Samuels, head of the European office of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said the Vatican was "giving a seal of approval in the hate campaign" against Israel.
Sir Sigmund Sternberg, the Jewish philanthropist who helped to negotiate the Holy See's recognition of Israel, said he had asked the Papal Nuncio of Great Britain to explain the reasons for the Vatican's support of the conference and was awaiting a reply.
On Sunday Pope Benedict said the conference was needed to combat racial intolerance around the world. He said it would help "put an end to every form of racism, discrimination and intolerance".
Oh, and if you're wondering about the title of this post, here's the explanation, from an article by H.W. Crocker at Inside Catholic (an article which will ignite a whole other controversy...but I'm just interested in these factoids and their implications for the present discussion:
So...L'Osservatore Romano was a fan of the Confederacy...is E.J. Dionne one now, too?...why did the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, editorialize on behalf of the Confederacy; why did British diplomat Odo Russell report that the pope "would not conceal from me that all his sympathies were with the Southern Confederacy and he wished them all success"; and why did Pope Pius IX send Davis a crown of thorns, woven by his own hands, when Davis was imprisoned by the Federals?
(And if you've ever wondered, why I did when passing through, why there's a "Pio Nono Avenue" in Macon, Georgia...I'd imagine that's the reason)
(Crown of thorns is at the Civil War Museum in New Orleans.)
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If the Vatican had published an account slamming Obama, then Dionne may have written a different column, but this and other right wing partisan Republican blogs claiming to be Catholic surely would have been dancing in the streets and quoting it like mad! The fact is, that's not what the Vatican published. The American bishops are embarrassing themselves, and hurting the Church. It's ironic and sad that when America as a whole has finally grown wise to the Limbaugh-Coulter etc. crowd and its hysteria, our own Church or at least some of its bishops seem to be adopting their approach.
"If the Vatican had published an account slamming Obama, then Dionne may have written a different column, but this and other right wing partisan Republican blogs claiming to be Catholic surely would have been dancing in the streets and quoting it like mad!"
It seems to me that was precisely the point of this post.
I disagree with this post. I am a conservative Catholic who has been waiting to hear any message of reproach from Rome, and I feel like I am waiting in vain. It would seem that if Pope Benedict had any problems with President Obama, he would have said something when he visited in APril prior to the elections, or he would have given a forceful reminder of a prolife position in his congratulatory message to the President, or he would have expressed something about the Bishops vs Notre Dame thing. But instead, what we have heard is . . . nothing. I can't help but to wonder if perhaps we really are making a mountain out of a molehill.
I vaguely remember an article in the Catholic press in 1995 saying that Chirac had revived acceptance of the honorary canon position after Mitterand (and possibly some before Mitterand) had turned it down due to lack of faith and lack of interest. So this might in reality be another "tradition" observed intermittently at most.
Is Obama speaking a tempest in a teapot? I hardly think so. I can't believe it isn't obvious why this is such an important issue to American pro-life Catholics. Anyone who knows history realizes that abortion is legal in the United States because individual Catholics failed to live up to Church teachings. Without the Catholics on the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade would have never been written into law. Had the bishops spoken out strongly against Catholic politicians the like of Cuomo perhaps the number of babies killed in the last 40 years would be less. They still fail to speak out strongly enough against the likes of Kennedy and Pelosi.
Abortion wasn't a travesty pushed on America by secularists and atheists, it has been shepherded along by Catholics, who felt it morally acceptable to vote for a man who called a baby a punishment and sees nothing morally bankrupt about letting a baby who has somehow manged to survive an attempted murder(abortion) die in a garbage pail due to lack of medical care.
I don't want to hear how some guy who isn't president any more was honored in 2001, or what his crimes were. Tell me why a Catholic University should be giving Obama a platform. Tell me why they should make it appear that they are endorsing his non-historical teaching of constitutional law, which supports abortion as a right, with an honorary degree.
Laws allowing abortion are unjust laws. No Catholic is bound to obey an unjust law. But until Catholics who support abortion are told that by their actions they place themselves outside the Church nothing will change. And by told I mean excommunicated. I mean no longer allowed to pretend that the Church doesn't have a stand on abortion or that they don't understand the Church's stand on abortion.
This is not inconsistent with praying for these people. It is not inconsistent with helping young girls who have been victims of the abortion culture. This is inconsistent with allowing these dissident Catholics to pretend to be Catholics in good standing and using that sham for political benefit.
One last point. It basically is irrelevant what L'Osservatore Romano says about Notre Dame inviting Obama. It doesn't even matter if fifty or one-hundred or five hundred bishops condemn what Notre Dame has done. The only thing that matters is what one bishop says. That is the bishop of South Bend, the diocese in which Notre Dame is located. He has said that inviting Obama and honoring him is a violation of the intent of the USCCB guidelines. He is the person with the responsibility for all of the souls at Notre Dame. It is his call to make and by ignoring him Notre Dame comes close to putting herself outside the Church.
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